Prisoners at the Bar: An Account of the Trials of the William Haywood Case,

the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, the Loeb-Leopold Case, the Bruno Hauptmann Case

Originally published in 1952, here a distinguished trial lawyer makes you a participant in the high drama of four notable twentieth-century American criminal cases.

You are on the scenes of the crimes; you accompany the detectives investigating them, and in your most important role you sit as “the thirteenth juror” at the trials of the accused.

With professional sureness, Francis X. Busch cuts through the fog of sensation and rumour that has surrounded all these cases to bring you what happened as it happened. You are in the box to hear the great Clarence Darrow plead with all his power and brilliance for the freedom of the labor leader William Haywood, and for the lives of youthful Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. You watch a procession of witnesses testifying in an atmosphere of growing tension that Sacco and Vanzetti were—or were not—participants in a payroll murder. You are present at the Lindbergh home the night little Charles, Jr., disappears from his crib. You follow the skilful police work that led to the arrest of Bruno Hauptmann and the amazing expert testimony that point to guilt.

In each case you understand every aspect of the threefold drama of crime, investigation and trial: the background of time and place, the force of prejudice for or against the defendants, the importance of the verdict to the whole country. Was justice always done? You have the facts presented fairly; the judgment is yours. With you the author withholds his opinion until the final pages of every trial.

Mr. Busch is a nationally famous expert on trial strategy and tactics. He shares with the amateur an ever-fresh sense of the unique drama in every case where human life or liberty is in the balance. From an overwhelming mass of course material he has reduced these cases to their essential of fact, human interest, excitement, suspect and sympathy. They come to you as thrilling stories, exactly true and understandable by all.